Chapter Text
The streets of Oakhurst were always so cold in the mornings.
At this hour, no one was around. Legundo took solace in the silence and solitude that began his daily routine. The click of his heels along the sidewalk as he walked, echoing faintly down the deserted and sleepy streets. The chill in the air just made him pull his coat closer to him, and occasionally when he exhaled, he could see his breath in the air.
Oakhurst was a quaint little town, only a handful of residents compared to the constantly busy and moving city life he used to have back at the Capital. He preferred this, it took a while to get used to, but he did rather enjoy the uneventful life of a small town.
Sure, it wasn’t without its oddities, and every small town such as Oakhurst had its own legends and generational folklore. Legundo, though, much preferred to stay grounded in the realities of Oakhurst. He’d stick to what he can see and feel rather than made up fantasies.
Just up the street, he can see one of the other town residents, Ren, waving at him from up the street just outside the little diner that he owned. Waving back, Legundo picked up his pace a little to catch up with the man. “Morning, Mr. Dogmourne.”
“Ah, hello Doctor! How are ye on this fine morning?” Ren asked cheerfully, the jingle of keys accompanying him putting his hand down at his side from greeting Legundo.
“I’m doing good, Mr. Dogmourne, about the same as usual. How about yourself?” Legundo plastered a slight smile on his face, one practiced through day to day pleasantries.
“I’m doin’ alright as well, Doctor. Had a bit of a fright last night, so I might be lackin’ slightly on some sleep, dontcha know.” Ren replied, and now that he said it, Legundo spotted the slightly more noticeable bags under the man’s eyes.
“Is everything alright, Ren?” He asked, also quickly running through a checklist in his mind as he glanced over the man for any other visual signs of an illness or injury.
“Oh it might’a just been the wind howlin’ mighty loud in the night, Doctor,” Ren waved him off, “I’ll be just alright.”
Shifting the position of his leather bag’s strap on his shoulder slightly, Legundo just nodded. “Okay, well you’re always welcome to come see me if you need anything,” he offered.
“That’s mighty kind of you, Doctor, I would greatly appreciate it if I need ye.” Ren’s smile brightened as he turned, his keys jingling in his hands once more as he moved to unlock the door to the diner.
“Have a good day, Mr. Dogmourne.” Legundo nodded in return, and turned to walk off towards the clinic.
The diner wasn’t too far from his practice, just across the street and a few paces down the block. Once he was at the front, he pulled his own keys from his pocket to unlock the door. A conversation with Ren happened nearly every morning, as they both arrived in the town around the same time. So at this point, it’s just become part of the routine.
Leave home, head into Main Street, chat with Ren as a brief catch up, head to the clinic. Easy as that every morning.
Once inside, Legundo made sure to lock the door behind him. While he was there fairly early, the clinic itself wouldn’t open for just a little while longer. Just long enough for him to set up for the day, do some minor clean up chores around the waiting room, front desk, and examination room. It wasn’t a lot of space, but given that he was the only doctor in town for quite some time, it worked well enough for him.
The clinic did have a back office, where he spent most of his mornings in to have a little breakfast, some coffee, and get some work done. He moved through the space, systematically turning on lights and powering equipment on for the day. After reaching his office, he took off his coat and hung it on the hook beside the door, replacing the white doctor’s coat that was hung there and put it on. Moving through the motions, Legundo then got to work on brewing a new pot of coffee after draining what little remained in the pot.
Once it was done, after pouring some coffee into a clean mug, he sat down in the chair at his desk. As he did so, something broke the quiet of the space around him.
A crashing sound, muffled and barely audible from his spot in the back office, caught his attention, and Legundo was immediately up out of his chair again, placing the coffee cup on the desk. He moved towards the only window in the room, adjusting the blinds so he could properly look out of it and into the back alley.
There, in the dim light of the dawn beginning to illuminate the streets of Oakhurst, he spotted a figure stumbling through. He also immediately noticed the drops of blood on the ground leading towards the person.
Once he noticed it, Legundo immediately rushed out of the door to his office and down the hall towards the back door that he knew would be faster in reaching the alley. Usually it was kept locked, and he’d never punched in the keycode password faster. Once unlocked, he raced out the door and into the alley.
It was just dark enough still that from a distance, he couldn’t quite tell who it was, but what he could see was the crimson drops on the floor, almost smudged as the figure stumbled and struggled to hold himself up.
“Hello?” He called out, just quiet enough to not alert too much unwanted attention, “Are you alright?”
At the sound of his voice, the figure jumped a little in surprise, and whipped their head around to face him. Frightened and half-lidded eyes stared back at him through a wet mess of brown hair. What startled him the most was the slight gleam in their eyes, glaring like a wild animal in the dark. But that wasn’t what concerned him. What concerned him was the amount of blood that covered most of this person.
“Doc?” The figure called weakly, and Legundo was immediately able to identify the voice.
Pyro.
Pyro was alone and injured in the alleyway. And from the looks of it, they were injured badly.
Legundo wasted no time, instinct and years of training kicking in to help the younger man. He moved forward and caught up to Pyro just as they lost their footing and nearly toppled over, but he caught them, ignoring the blood that immediately covered his hands from grabbing Pyro’s arm to swing it over his shoulder to help him walk.
As they moved, Pyro groaned a little in pain, his head lulling and falling against Legundo’s shoulder. “I got you, Pyro,” he soothed, trying to move quick enough to begin treating them as fast as possible.
He brought the younger man inside, kicking the door closed behind him before moving towards the private treatment room. Despite his age, Legundo managed to lift Pyro up onto the exam table, which wasn’t very hard considering just how light Pyro was.
Pyro swayed a little as he sat on the table, and before he did anything, Legundo quickly removed their bloodied coat. As he attempted to remove their sweater as well, Pyro hissed in pain as he tried to lift the clothing item over his shoulder.
Okay, so whatever the injury, it seems to be somewhere on his shoulder, Legundo noted, and he mumbled brief apologies under his breath before reaching for a pair of medical shears and began cutting at the sweater to reveal more of Pyro’s shoulder to reveal the wound.
Working quickly, Legundo cleaned up as much of the blood as he could, revealing what looked like a bite mark just at the juncture of skin connecting his shoulder to his neck. His brow furrowed a little in confusion, because the mark didn’t look like any kind of animal, nor was it in a spot where any sort of wild animal would really go for, let alone reach.
From a preliminary and very quick examination, the bite seemed to hit Pyro’s jugular vein, which Legundo didn’t have time to question the why and how the younger man ended up with an injury like that. He did a quick glance to see if he could see any other injuries, and spotted a lot more blood on his left sleeve than there should be.
Gently, but quickly, rolling up their sleeve revealed what appeared to be yet another bite wound on their wrist. This one was smaller, and seemed to have not been bleeding as much as the one on their neck.
Legundo took a deep breath, and quickly got to work. He cleaned up the wounds, stopping as much of the bleeding as he could. Both the bite wounds didn’t look deep enough to need stitches, so he instead applied steady pressure and bandaged the wounds. As he worked, he did so quickly and efficiently from years of practice. As odd as the young man’s injuries were, he still needed help.
As he had cleaned and patched them up, Pyro had gone quiet, and when Legundo looked at him again, they seemed a little spacey. There was a vacant look in their eyes, their face noticeably paler than he remembered them being. It was all something that felt unusual and slightly unsettled him. He quickly shoved that feeling away.
There wasn’t room to feel uneasy when Pyro was in need of help.
Once Pyro seemed stable enough to move, he gently and carefully lifted them up in order to clean up the blood that had smeared all over the exam table, then gently moved them into a bed just in the next room over. He kept moving through the motions, setting up an IV drip in order to help Pyro get some fluids and pain medication in their system. As he stuck the line into their arm, they flinched, hissing in discomfort slightly, but didn’t fight it. Satisfied, Legundo settled Pyro in to let them rest, not quite closing the door behind him as he dimmed the lights.
Now that he was coming down from what felt like an adrenaline rush of treating Pyro, Legundo let out a breath of relief. The entire morning was strange to say the least, even stranger were the wounds on the younger man he’d just treated. What puzzled Legundo was the exact circumstances of how Pyro ended up in the state he was in as well as how they ended up in the alleyway.
Legundo shook his head. It wouldn’t help anything to try and puzzle pieces together that clearly didn’t belong together. What mattered was that Pyro was taken care of now.
Moving back to his office just across the hall, Legundo took off the slightly bloodied white coat and hung it back on the wall, then dug out a spare he had tucked away in a side cabinet. After, he moved back to his desk, and opened up the patient files for what he had on Oakhurst. It took a moment to locate Pyro’s folder, the man was after all a fairly new person in town compared to most of the other residents. Suffice it to say, he didn’t have a lot of medical files for Pyro.
What he did have though, was the emergency contact information that was listed at the bottom of the file. Pyro had seemed to list his roommate as his emergency contact, a woman by the name of Apo.
Legundo didn’t know much about Apo outside of what she’d told him, but that wasn’t going to change him contacting her in order to inform her about her roommate’s condition.
After a brief voicemail message, because Apo hadn’t picked up when he rang, Legundo went to check on Pyro briefly. Their pulse seemed a little slow, but nothing else seemed to be wrong and they were breathing, so there wasn’t much else he could do. So, he left them to rest while he waited for their roommate to arrive.
Something was nagging at the back of his mind, something that didn’t add up. From what he knew of Pyro, something just didn’t feel right about how he’d found them in the alley. How they got there, and what gave him those injuries, and nothing else, didn’t make any sense. That and the fact that he had noticed two distinct, what looked like, puncture marks made no sense.
He supposed, if certain resident’s theories were to be believed, that it resembled a “vampire” bite. That was of course if you believed in such things, and Legundo was skeptical to the existence of the fictional creatures.
An echo of a knock from the front of the clinic brought Legundo out of his thoughts, and he moved towards the front doors after shaking his head slightly as if to clear it. On the other side of the glass doors, he spotted a figure he was vaguely familiar with.
Apo, looking barely awake and yet still dressed properly for the day, stood on the opposite side of the locked door. She waved slightly at Legundo through the glass, beams of the morning sun hitting the glass beside her.
It took just a moment for him to open the door, and he held it open for her as she raised inside. “Where’s Pyro, is he okay?” She asked quickly, beginning to look around the room and peer down the back hallway.
“He’s alright, he’s been resting,” Legundo reassured her, motioning for her to follow him back. “I found him earlier this morning in the alley behind the clinic. He was in rough shape, but I managed to get him stable and treated his injuries.”
“Injuries?! Oh God, what on earth happened to him,” Apo sighed worriedly, nervously brushing some loose hair behind her ear.
“I’m not entirely sure,” He pushed open the door to the back rooms, letting her in again before bringing her to the room Pryo was resting in. “He was barely conscious when I found him, and they haven’t said a word to me just yet. I’ve just been letting them rest for now.”
He nudged the door open, and let Apo walk through into the quiet room. Pyro had been sleeping, when he last checked on them, but at the movement in the room and light creeping in from the hallway, their eyes blinked open. “Apo?” They called out weakly.
“Oh thank God, are you okay?” Apo responded, stopping next to him and sitting in the chair at the side of the bed. Legundo just stood slightly off to the side, moving through a familiar routine of checking vitals and looking over his patient to gauge how he was doing.
“I’m alright, I think.” Pyro said, pausing for a moment as if considering how he was feeling at the present moment, “I feel better than I was earlier.”
“Pyro,” Legundo started gently, standing at the opposite side from where Apo was sitting, “Do you remember at all what happened to you?”
The room went silent as the question hung in the air, and as Pyro looked away from them both to consider his answer, Apo just barely bit her lip nervously as she awaited what they had to say.
Swallowing dryly, Pyro finally looked back up at him for a moment before responding, his brow furrowed in what looked to be confusion. “I… I don’t know. I was in the woods, I think? Everything kind of… blurs together.”
Apo gently reaches out to put her hand over their own on the bed, at which they flinched a little for only a moment before almost leaning into the touch. “That’s alright. It’s not uncommon for one’s mind to block out a traumatic moment. What’s important now is that you seem to be improving, which is a good sign.”
“Does that mean I can take him home soon?” Apo asked, leaning up in her seat slightly without letting go of Pyro’s hand.
Legundo nodded. “I think with just a little more rest, yes, Pyro you can go home soon. I’d like to see you finish this IV drip first, and as long as your vitals all seem to be stable, you can leave before the afternoon.”
At that, Pyro seemed to visibly calm, significantly, relaxing further into the bed. “I’ll leave you to rest, but is there anything I can get for you right now?” Legundo offered as he made towards the door.
“Would I be able to get something to eat?” Pyro asked quickly after only taking a moment of consideration, “I’m.. I’m really hungry.”
“I can go and get you something from Ren’s diner if you want, so long as the doc says it’s okay,” Apo offered, immediately standing up.
“Yes, that’ll be fine,” Legundo nodded, and held the door open for Apo once more after they promised their roommate they’d be back shortly.
He led her back out and towards the door, watching passively out the glass doors as she headed out and across the street. Once Legundo was sure she made it across the street he moved to head towards the front desk to wait for the time being, especially since now the clinic is technically open for the day.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow move across the street, and cautiously he looked back towards the street once more. It was still fairly early enough that the streets were empty for the most part, but Legundo couldn’t shake that same uneasy feeling he had when he stared at Pyro in the back alley, like a wild animal was watching him.
As if whatever it was could sense his unease, a shadow in an adjacent alley across the street moved, and Legundo watched as whatever it was vanished further into the depths of the remaining darkness now that dawn had broken into the day.